


punish me

by bachmanroad



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Derealization, Dissociation, Drowning, Emetophobia, Gen, Pre-Canon, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:43:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bachmanroad/pseuds/bachmanroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I would travel any distance, from the highest mountain to the depths of hell. I can’t live this way anymore. Please, help me.</p><p>Recently widowed James Sunderland makes a wish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	punish me

 

 

 

James gets home, and for once the first thing that hits him isn’t the malignant silence, but the strong stench of something rotting. 

 

(He’s drunk, enough that the day behind him is now nothing but a blur. Wherever it is that he has just come from, he is positive that it was not the bar since he can no longer stand the pitying glances or the way they act when James enters, their talk of what the missus did that riled them up enough to send them out drinking quickly changing to benign comments on the football score.) 

 

James prods around inside the fridge for the source of the smell, but it is empty save for a few cans of energy drink and a six-pack. James pulls out a beer and drinks heavily from it, relishing the way it makes the world fuzz and fade. It does nothing to erase that terrible, cloying, almost sickly sweet smell that seems to cling to every surface of the little two up two down. Stumped, James pads through to the lounge and falls into his recliner and watches the ceiling fan rotate as he drains the life out of his beer. When he looks back at the wall, his eyes trick him into thinking that it is writhing in severe contortions, and with the off-colour peach wallpaper it reminds James of the way muscle moves beneath skin. 

 

It makes him want to vomit. 

 

He makes it to the kitchen sink, desperately retching, but there’s nothing in his stomach and all he brings up is bile and beer. It fizzes on its descent down the plughole, and James watches it, overwhelmed with the niggling feeling that he is forgetting something. Something important. Shoot, he knows what it is. He’s forgotten to take out the trash again. Mary hates it when he does that, because then the bags begin to stink and the smell always gets into the house no matter how far James drags the can away from the backdoor. 

 

James grabs a sack from the cabinet beneath the sink, and tours the house to empty each of the trash cans. The stink is even greater upstairs in the little box room which Mary sometimes uses as her office, and James takes a break in his current domestic duty to grab the off brand aerosol air freshening spray that he gets fifty cents cheaper than RRP from work. The room is small, and James usually keeps the door locked, so it isn’t a surprise that the stink has been allowed to fester. He sprays everywhere: behind the wardrobe, near the window, over the body of his dead wife decomposing on the mattress, beneath the bed, around the desk where Mary marks her papers. Satisfied that the smell has been vanquished, or at least masked well enough that company wouldn’t complain, James empties the trash can and locks up behind him on the way out. 

 

Once every trash can in the house is empty, James knots up the sack and takes it out to the dumpster. It’s overflowing. Has he missed trash day? Do the garbagemen really care if his can isn’t exactly on the curb? Too tired and too drunk to care, James leaves the sack on the ground beside the overflowing can, and heads back inside. 

 

It smells a little better now. Out of the corner of his eye, James sees the wall still moving, but when he fully fixes his gaze on it everything is as it should be. As it should be. What should anything be? Mary should be here, right now, chiding James for forgetting his chores and making him a coffee to chase away the alcohol blues. He should be sat on the couch, cuddling up to his wife and best friend who has just been offered the job of her dreams; only now she’s fucking dead and gone and James only has himself and his wiggling walls for company. 

 

The lonely ache inside of him is back again. It catches its claws into his chest, threatening to tear him apart, so James decides to placate it with more beer. He shotguns ****the first over the sink, watching as the fresh suds combine with the remains of his puke, and takes the second back into the living room. He flicks on the TV, but it’s late, all it plays is static, and the white noise sounds like screaming. James shuts it off quickly. The grandfather clock in the main hall calls out the hour. Mary loves the whimsy of Winchester chimesbut they make James’ skin want to crawl right off his bones. James has no idea where the time has gone, but he isn’t ready to go to sleep just yet. He hasn’t slept in his room since Mary signed her DNR, can’t bring himself to confront the idea that they will never share their marital bed again. Most mornings, he wakes up in his recliner, spittle down his chin, wearing the clothes from the night before. If it’s a work day, James will usually just pick himself up and head on straight out the door, grabbing an energy drink from the fridge if the hangover is too persistent in fogging his head. He knows his boss hates it, but no one in the company seems to have figured out how to discipline him without an ensuing HR nightmare. It makes James feel powerful in the most mundane of ways, because this is exactly the kind of man that he is and always will be: the kind of man who only feels untouchable after three cans of beer because that’s how many it takes to make the world go away.

 

When you’re waiting for someone with terminal illness to die, every second feels like an hour, every hour like a full day, and a day an entire year. James always thought that when Mary finally passed away, he would be free, but all her death has brought him is a new type of pain that haunts his every moment. James just doesn’t know who he is anymore. If someone were to divest him of his agonies, what of him would be left behind? 

  

James sits in his shitty chair, drink in hand, and daydreams about what paths remain open to him now that he is a widower. He could leave, sell the house and throw what’s left of the life he and Mary shared together into the back of his car and just _drive_. Or, he could finally put himself back out there, the way his buddies down the bar suggest he does. Meet someone new and shack up with her. Would he make the same mistakes again? James knows he could never fall so earnestly in love with someone the way he did with Mary, can’t bear the thought of sharing his soul with anyone but her. All the same, the vision is there, and James knows how it all _could_ happen — a tight young thing with just enough _Mary_ about her to keep his interest. Her legs or her eyes or her voice, but without Mary’s fastidious inhibitions. Perhaps this Mary-Nouvelle will dare to bare a little skin, dye her hair, a tattoo. Won’t insist that they make love under the covers with only the reading light on. James scoffs to that last idea, like he isn’t a total vanilla ice-cream no syrup or sprinkles kind of guy. Mary is the only woman James has ever been with like _that_ , he couldn’t produce a list of secret kinks even if he was given all day to think about it. Whenever James wants to yank it, he uses nudie magazines and lotion. The filthiest magazine he owns features gasping heavily painted women, women bursting the seams of their cliche nurse outfits, tiny waists and big tits, high heels with wicked points. The kind of stuff that most grown men would laugh at, but leaves James feeling hollow each and every time he brings himself off with it.

James doesn’t want Mary-Nouvelle, he wants the real thing. James would do _anything_ to have her back, no sacrifice would be too great. If he could just hold her to his chest once more, tangle his fingers into her hair and feel her against him, soft and warm, healthy and _alive_ …

James knows he has it in him to kill himself. Hell, he’s halfway there with the amount he drinks alone, if the pains low in his gut are anything to go by. It’s fucked up, but James has always known how he would do it, like the world’s worst contingency plan. 

Water. He has always been drawn to it, always felt most comfortable submerged beneath it, loves the way he can close his eyes and lose himself in the way the water cradles him until his body ceases to be and all he is is the rush of blood in his ears. It had scared Mary, back when they were first courting and would often go swimming, how long James would force himself to remain beneath the surface. He had never confessed to her his real reasons for doing so, about how it made him feel, instead laughing boyishly as he begged her to time him holding his breath. 

  

The last time James had made the mistake of buying some groceries and things for the house from work, the picture of Mary that he keeps in his wallet fell out. His colleague (a new hire, didn’t keep the position for long) running the register had grabbed it before he was able, and teased him, asked if she was his mom. So what if she preferred a sensible style of dress? Mary was perfect and beautiful just the way she was because that was what made her happy, and James never thought that the things he would miss the most were all the things that used to drive him mad. He would give anything to once more trip over her shoes as he walked in through the front door, to smell the honeyed sweetness of her special occasion perfume even though it gave him migraines, to hear her massacre Beethovenon the piano, the clumsy way she would sing along.  

 

The grandfather clock tolls again, bells clunking out a dirge. James realises he has been sat staring at nothing for hours, the beer in his hand long warm and half full. He chugs it, relishing the way it makes his head feel like it is floating inches above his neck. James scrubs at his face, it’s sticky, sensitive. How long has he been crying? 

 

Three years. Three horrible, Sisyphean years, full of medicines and anger and broken promises. James hasn’t made any progress at all. He doesn’t want to, because progress means either leaving or finding someone new. Presented with those options, James has decided that if he cannot have Mary back then he at least wants to die in this house, this life that they built together, just like she had. James staggers over to the drinks cabinet, pulling out the dusty bottle of scotch that his dad had made him promise that he would keep for a special occasion. Dad had probably been referring to the birth of their first child, but since that ship has long since sunk, James decides that this is as special an occasion as any. 

Scotch firmly clenched in one hand, James uses the other to drag himself up the stairs. They feel ten times too long, like they’re looping, and for a horrible moment James is sure that the stairs will go on forever and this will be the way he dies. When he reaches the top, he can’t help but dissolve into giddy giggles that threaten to taper off into the beginning of a fresh crying fit. James isn’t sure when he lost all control, but he knows there is only one way to fix things now. 

 

Beneath the box room door drifts the redolence of splendid rot.

 

James starts to run the bath, making sure that the water is nice and warm. He prefers it cold, but doesn’t want the risk of sobering up. Sober James is the one who is happy to live in this lie, and he refuses to be that James anymore. When the bath is almost full he climbs in, fully clothed and faucets running. The water is soothing, if a little scalding, and the steam mists the air. James unscrews the cap off the scotch and sets to work, chugging it as quickly as he can manage before he pukes. The world begins to hop in juddering turns, an infernal carousel, and the drunker he gets the more the walls begins to wiggle and writhe as if they too share his pain. Shit, is he really going to do this? James closes his eyes, lets his head whirl around and around, willing himself to slouch back and _slide_ beneath the water. But his bones are weary and unwilling, he struggles to fold himself in half, head lolling against the side of the tub. Eventually, the alcohol takes control for him. James’ hand drops the bottle, and distantly he hears it clatter, hears the water slap onto the tile as he slumps deeper. Water tickles his cheeks as his breath bubbles along the surface. His vision blurs, dimming around the edges until the world is nothing but a pinprick, and the last thing his dizzy eyes see is the picture hanging over the bathroom sink.

It’s a shot of the hotel they had stayed in on their honeymoon, the perspective making it seem as if the photographer is the lake itself. James had picked it. When he had seen the heartache on Mary’s face the day of check-out, he snuck downstairs and purchased the print for her from the hotel’s gift shop. He had planned on presenting it to her when they arrived back home, but instead had to offer it up as a consolation prize when she had discovered that he had left their tape of the honeymoon back in the hotel room’s VCR. Mary hung it in the bathroom because she loved to take long baths to soothe her aches after coming home from treatment. The more James looks at the picture, the colder the water in the tub feels, and the bathroom begins to fill with the pine-and-ozone smell that he remembers permeating the lake’s shore. James shudders, numb body slipping a little further. 

 _I would travel any distance,_ James thinks _, from the highest mountain to the depths of hell. I can’t live this way anymore. Please, help me._

James’ head finally slips beneath the water. Instead of the roaring of his blood, his ears fill with the mournful cry of an emergency klaxon.

 

James wakes as he has every day since Mary’s death, groggy, disorientated, and definitely not in his bed. He’s in the tub of all places, there’s water _everywhere,_ chilling his bones, clothing sticks like a second skin. James is thankful that the tank eventually ran dry. What the hell was he thinking, trying to take a bath half-cut and fully clothed? He will have to grab the mop and sop up the mess he has made on the floor, or else he’ll have to deal with mildew. He hates mildew, the smell makes him think of the inside of a casket (though he’s never seen one), of slothful death and rampant decay. 

Speaking of, something smells damn awful up here. Did he forget to take out the trash again? Mary always had to remind him to take it out otherwise he would forget until the bags began to bloat up and squirm with maggots. Since her death he hasn’t gotten any better. The neighbours are no doubt sick of him, they had always preferred sweet, sociable, school-teacher Mary. 

That’s ok, though. So had James.

He pulls himself out of the tub, tangling his hands into the shower curtain to keep himself steady. The clock on the windowsill tells him that he is going to be late for work unless he moves _now_ , but this isn’t as good a motivator as usual. Something in James’ soul tells him that he won’t be going into work, because today he is destined for much bigger things. Once the vertigo passes, he clambers out of the tub, wincing as his feet skid in the slickness on the floor. Not only has he caused a flood, chunks of glass glitter in the pale dawn light and where the tiles aren’t pooled with water they are sticky with the dribbling with the spilled guts of a twenty-year bottle of scotch. Despite the veritable pandaemonium, James finds his eyes are drawn to the picture above the bathroom sink. It’s a print his Dad had given to him and Mary as a house warming gift, a watercolour of a snow blanketed hill at sunset. Mary had put it in here because she didn’t like it, but was too polite to not hang it up somewhere. The longer he looks at it, the cruddier it seems. James has never realised how much the mountain seems to resemble a bleeding pyramid. The mop lives in the pantry, so James forces his legs to take him down the stairs so he can retrieve it. He doesn’t remember anything of last night, but vaguely recalls his paranoia over a never-ending staircase. He looks backwards to reassure himself; he cannot see the hallway over the top, the hallway where he just was. He looks down, the bottom of the staircase is swallowed in darkness. 

When he does reach the bottom (why would he not?), there’s something waiting for him. An envelope sitting on his welcome mat. Receiving mail is not itself unusual, there’s a stack of unpaid bills gathering dust on the table in the hallway. What makes it odd is that not only is the postal carrier generally quite happy with the usual arrangement of leaving his mail in the box out front, but that it is far too early for her to have yet made her rounds. Perhaps it’s a letter from one of his neighbours, finally complaining about the state his house is in. No… the closer James gets, the more the stationary looks awfully familiar. In fact, it looks a helluva lot like the stationary Mary had written their _Thank-You’s_ on after they had returned from their honeymoon. He picks it up with shaking, reverent hands. If it is her’s, he knows exactly what to look for.

 _From the Desk of Mary Shepherd-Sunderland_ is stamped in gold on the back of the envelope. There’s no mistaking the personalised stamp that Mary’s mother had given her on their wedding day, a tongue-in-cheek gift, since Mary was both very passionate about reviving the dying art of letter writing and keeping her maiden name. Mary had preferred to use gold ink instead of black, because she believed it was softer, less abrupt. James brings the envelope to his nose, winces. It’s that sickly sweet honey perfume that always gives him a headache. 

James shoots a nervous glance behind him, back up the stairs. Dead people can’t write letters. He flips it over. The post mark is for Silent Hill, Maine _._ ****He tears the envelope open, and his heart skips over a beat when he spots Mary’s tidy handwriting spiralling across the page. James reads it, then again, then again. Dead people can’t write letters, yet here from the desk of his dearly departed wife is a letter telling her husband exactly where to find her.

Mary’s specialist subject is Greek mythology, and her favourite has always been the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. In her darkest days at the end of her sickness, James had read that tale so often that eventually he had been able to recite it to her from memory. 

James knows what Mary is asking him to do. 

He races back upstairs, shucking off his wet clothes as he goes. He hasn’t done the laundry in days, so has to contend with his cleanest pair of jeans rather than his preferred slacks. He considers the blue dress shirt that he had worn the day he proposed to her, but can’t find it, so instead settles for a polo shirt that doesn’t smell too badly of stale sweat. He’s disappointed, but he can always dress up for her once he has her home. Today’s mission is all about survival rather than seduction after all.

Finally, James pulls on his jacket, patting it down to make sure his wallet (and the picture of Mary it contains) and car keys are already in the pockets. As an afterthought, he tucks the letter from Mary into the inside pocket for safe keeping. The crisp paper crinkles against his chest as he laces his shoes.

What else will he need? A map, Mary had kept the one from their honeymoon even though James had teased her for it. He finds it in her bureau, and stuffs it into the back pocket of his jeans. There’s a blank space yelling in his mind, he is forgetting something, Mary always has to remind James of what he needs for a long trip —

That’s it. James shoots out into the hallway, disappears into the box room, returns with a misshapen lump wrapped inside the linens reserved strictly for guests. The rank tang of iodine and of something bitter sweet is stronger than ever, makes tears well in his eyes. Did James forget to empty the trash again? There’s no time now, not when he has a long drive to make. He’ll just have to deal with that when he and Mary get back home.

James carries his bundle bridal style down to the car, and after some deliberation decides to leave it in the trunk. The awful gnawing darkness inside of himspikes, catches him in its jaws, consuming. It is as if he is watching himself on a screen — another James, a pale reflection, is lowering his bundle tenderly to rest beside his old empties, his tire jack, his old picnic blanket.No, now is not the time to let himself get lost, he has to get out onto the road and see Mary for the first time in three years. She’s _waiting_ for him. He shakes his head and rubs his eyes, willing the world to regain enough focus that he feels safe enough to get inside his car. It’s a fair drive to Silent Hill, last time he and Mary had stopped off to stay a night at his dad’s building just to break up the trip. How many years has it been since he last sat down and just _talked_ with his dad? James frowns, shutting the trunk. Had Dad been at Mary’s funeral? James decides that he will stop there on the return journey. Dad has always loved Mary, he’ll be so surprised to see her again.

James throws the tourist map of Silent Hill onto the passenger seat. He checks his mirrors, buckles his seat belt. He turns the key in the ignition, but before releasing the parking break he pauses to grab a couple of air fresheners from the pack he keeps in the glove box. There’s a terrible smell. Has he dropped something perishable out of a grocery bag without realising it again? James chuckles (is that what he sounds like?) to himself as drives, watches his little house slowly fade away in the rear view mirror. It sounds like something he would do. Mary is always teasing him for the weird and wonderful things she finds hidden in the trunk of his car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If I have missed any tags, please let me know.


End file.
